He couldn’t move his body. He could taste nothing. He couldn’t open his eyes. All he could do was smell and hear. And his senses of smell and hearing told him he was not in the Elysian Fields. What had happened to him? He was uncorked, and condemned for eternity to listen to scurrilous inmates fight over bedpans. Perhaps there was some cholla nearby, too. Maybe they could stuff it in their throats as they fought over who was going to clean what. Was this his Temple of Fame? Is this how he was buried with kings and heroes?
And then—oh, no! It just never stops. More loud noises, only now a bitter argument. Alexander sighed, rippling the River Styx with his whistling sighs, rowing at the crossroads between the land of the living and the land of the dead. He wanted to tell them to shut the hell up. This argument was too close, almost next to him.
He wanted to open his eyes. Why couldn’t he see in his hereafter? He couldn’t see, oh, but how loud and clearly he was hearing!
“Coma, I tell you! I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry about that, but he is in a coma! A deep and prolonged unconsciousness, very likely brain dead, in a persistent vegetative state, very common after a severe injury like his, coupled with hypoxia. Coma! We’re doing what we can for him, to keep him comfortable. I don’t know who you think you are, telling me we’re not doing enough.”
“Enough? You’re doing nothing!” a voice yelled.
Ah.
This one was angry, was loud, was upset, but it wasn’t grating and it wasn’t cacophonous. “First of all, he is not in a coma. That’s first. Perhaps it’s easier for you to abuse your medical privileges while you pretend he’s lying here beyond your help, but I’m going to tell you right now, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“He is in a coma! He’s been in Saigon a week under my care. You’re here five seconds. I’ve seen thousands like him. I’ve been a nurse thirty years. Not once has his pulse risen above 40, and he has almost no blood pressure.”
“His pulse is 40, is it? Have you even glanced at the patient? Have you lifted your eyes, just once today, or in the last seven days, and taken one look at the patient? A 40 pulse?”
Alexander felt his wrist being lifted and circled by a small warm hand and then dropped back on the bed.
“When was the last time you touched him? His pulse is 62 right now. And without even putting a cuff on him, I can tell just from looking at his skin that his blood pressure is not 60 over 40 as you’ve conveniently listed here in your little chart, which, by the way, you have not initialed off since yesterday morning, but 70 over 55! That is not a comatose patient. Did you even go to school?”
“I have fifty of these men to take care of, not just him! I’m doing the best I can. Who do you think I am? Who do you think you are?”
“I don’t care who you are. And you don’t want to know who I am. What matters is that this man is a major in the United States Army, and he was critically wounded, and he depends on you to take care of him so he can live, and you’re standing here with your bedraggled face and your insolent eyes, telling me you’ve got to clean out the water closet on the second floor, while a human being is lying in your bed with undrained air pressure in his lungs, and with dressing around his chest wound that has not been changed for at least twelve hours!”
“That is not true! That is simply not true! We change it every four hours when we decompress his lung!”
“Bullshit! Listen to his wheezing—that sounds like a recently drained lung to you? He can’t exhale! Where’s the decompression catheter? And his chest dressing—I don’t have to go near him to smell that dressing, to know that it has not been changed or irrigated in over twelve hours. I don’t have to go near him to see that the IV that drips fluids into his body—fluids without which he can’t survive!—has slipped out of the vein and now his entire forearm has blown up to three times its normal size. What, you can’t see that?” The voice rose and rose and rose until it was the loudest voice in purgatory. “Put the metal pans down, nurse, they’re blocking your view, put them down and take a look at your patient! Smell your patient! He’s got a five-inch stab wound in his leg that’s now infected only because his dressing has not been changed, and the penicillin you’re giving him to treat him is now dripping into his open arm cavity instead of into his veins, and you’re telling me you’re taking care of him? This is your best? A healthy man would go into a fucking coma under your care! Where is your attending physician? I want to see him right now.”
“But—”
“Right now—and not a single additional word out of you. But you will get one more word out of me—I will have your job, if it’s the last thing I do. You are not fit to wash bedpans in this hospital, much less take care of wounded soldiers. Now go get me a doctor. This man is not staying in your so-called care another minute. Another second. The NVA could take care of him better than you. Now go! Go, I said!”
His arm was being lifted up, his gown pulled away, a long thin sharp needle going softly and without pain deep past his rib, past his muscle, into the pleural space surrounding his lungs. Shh, darling, shh, you’re all right, shh, breathe now. Everything is going to be all right.
Ah, thought Alexander, no longer wheezy, his body relaxing, his mind clearing, his hands, his fingers, his heart comforted... his eyes still closed, and though no nicotine, no ocean, no Luga, no blinchiki, no bread, no quiet, no harmony, still loud, still noisy, still strident, and yet...
Heaven.
There was no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, but finally he thought he had sight because he opened his eyes, and in front of him on a chair sat Tatiana. She was so pale, she looked as if her freckles had vanished. She was unglossed, was wearing no makeup. Her hair was pulled back. Her lips were matte pink, her eyes mottled sage, a gray-green. Her unsmiling hands were on her lap. She sat silently and said nothing. But all he knew was this: the last time he opened his eyes, he saw Tatiana and the first time he opened his eyes in he didn’t know how long, he saw Tatiana. She was sitting by his side and her eyes were softly on him. Around her, in what looked like a hospital room, he saw lilac sand verbena, agave and golden poppy in planters on the windowsill. On the table in the corner stood a small Christmas tree, all done up and twinkly with multi-colored lights. And next to him on the little table, standing against a small easel was a vivid painting not of lilac sand verbena but of lilac in the spring, like the kind that used to grow in the Field of Mars across from his Leningrad garrison barracks.
Alexander moved no part of his body, didn’t move his head or his mouth. He tried moving his fingertips, his toes, his tongue. Something slow to let him know he was alive. Just a small sign before he opened his mouth. Can he hear her voice in his head? Are there any memories he has that they share? Is she telling him things, like not to worry? Is she comforting him with words?
He didn’t know. He didn’t think so. He was afraid to move because she was not moving. She was just sitting looking at him, not even blinking. It occurred to him then that maybe he hadn’t opened his eyes, maybe he was dreaming and his eyes were still closed. They couldn’t possibly be open because she was not reacting to his open eyes. He closed his. And the moment he closed his eyes he heard—
“Mom, look, Daddy blinked!”
His eyes flew open.
Pasha was standing in front of him, somberly peering into his face. Leaning over, he kissed Alexander’s cheek.
“Dad? Are you blinking?” A strong strawberry-blond head pushed up and forced itself in front of Pasha. It was Harry with crystal green eyes. Harry had new freckles. Harry leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, on the nose, on his cheek. “Mom, you have to shave him again, he is growing a beard. But he is not as pale today, don’t you think?” A small hand lay on his stubble, rubbed it. Harry lifted up Alexander’s SOG knife, inches away from Alexander’s face, the gun-blue blade gleaming and said, “Dad, I have never seen anything this sharp. I could shave you myself with this. This is an amazing knife! Is this the kind that went into your leg? Di
d you know it’s so sharp, it etched the metal on the crank of your bed? After lunch, I’m going to etch your name with it!”
Another soft grunting noise, a body pushing, shoving, another small head rising up, but this one lower to the ground, not over him, but trying to jump up to be seen, a blonde, brown-eyed, round-faced head that said, “Daddy, look, I cut my hair to look just like yours and the boys. Mommy doesn’t like it. But do you like it, Daddy?”
Now Alexander moved. His fingertips moved and his hand moved and his arm lifted and touched the three heads in front of him. He pawed them with his palm, placed his hand right over their eyes and noses, and hair, like a bear. They stood motionlessly, their heads bent into his hands. They felt warm. Clean. Harry had a small black stitch in his cheek. Pasha was wearing glasses. Janie really had cut her hair to her scalp—obviously spending too much time with her brothers, and had a bruise on her temple to prove it. Alexander opened his mouth, put his tongue to the roof, cleared his throat, took air into his lungs (or lung? Was he like the cursed one-lunged Ouspensky now?) and said, “Anthony?”
“I’m here, Dad.” The voice came from his left.
Alexander turned his head. Anthony, dressed in jeans and a dark pullover, his hair longer, his face clear and shaved and saved and unbruised, sat draped in the chair by his other side. Alexander blinked in relief and for a flicker of a moment, for a brief soaring flutter of swallow’s wing, he thought, Please, dear God, maybe it was all a dream, maybe none of it happened, our dreams, mine and Ant’s, all our lives, of caves, of burning woods, of running, and this was yet another, and it was real bad, but now I’ve opened my eyes and maybe everything is okay and Anthony is okay.
But the moment went plummet. The swallow was gone. A million flickering decisions, a million choices, a million bricks and steps and leaves and actions starting with his father’s life, with his mother’s life, with their train ride through the blue Alps from Paris to Moscow in December 1930, with his mother’s money already hidden deep in her suitcases, hidden away from Harold, whom she loved, whom she believed in, but still—her ten thousand American dollars came with her in secret, just in case, for her only son, for her only Alexander, whom she hoped for and loved most of all. One train ride from Paris to Moscow and now, forty years later, Alexander’s perfect son sat in a chair, and had no arm.
His eyes filling with some very alive things, Alexander turned quickly away because he couldn’t bear to look at Anthony, whose own eyes were filling with some very alive things. Tania, Alexander whispered. Where are you, Tania?
The children had been ushered to the background, and though they still tried to stick their little heads in, they were unceremoniously pushed aside, and now in front of him, on the edge of his bed, near his rib, sat Tatiana. His hand rose and lay in her lap. He turned his palm down to feel her skirt, it was soft—cotton jersey or cashmere. He felt her thighs underneath. Ah, density. He glided his paw up her sweater, also cashmere soft, over her breasts—ah, weight—up her throat, to her face. Yes. It was Tatiana, not specter but matter. She was measurable. His little Newton had mass and occupied space. A small finite matter in infinite space. That is what math gave him—principles of design that tied together the boundless universe. That is why he measured her. Because she was order.
Her arms went around him. Alexander smelled her lilac soap, her strawberry shampoo, faint coffee, musk, chocolate, faint bread, sugar, caramel, yeast, such familiar comforting smells, like refuge, and he was pressed into her neck, his jaw against her breasts and her silken hair was in his hands. He was alive. She said nothing, sighing so heavily, rippling her own River Styx as she held him, her struggling palpitating heart at his cheek.
But he said something. He whispered to comfort her. “Babe, how can I die,” he whispered, “when you have poured your immortal blood into me?”
And late late late when he thought they had gone—or he had gone— to sleep maybe, to a place inside his head where they couldn’t reach him, in the dark, he opened his eyes, and next to him sat Anthony. Alexander shut his eyes, not wanting Anthony to see all the things he was carrying, and Anthony leaned deeply in and lowered his forehead onto Alexander’s bandaged chest.
“Dad,” he whispered, “I swear to God, you have to stop it. You’ve been doing this for weeks now, turning away every time you look at me. Please. Stop. I’m hurt enough. Think of yourself, remember your-self—did you want my mother to turn her face from you when you came back from war? Please. I don’t give a fuck about the arm. I don’t. I’m not like Nick Moore. I’m like Mom. I’ll adjust, little by little. I’m just glad to be alive, to be back. I thought my life was over. I didn’t think I would ever come back, Dad,” said Anthony, raising his head. “What are you so upset about? It wasn’t even my good arm.” He smiled lightly. “I never liked it. Couldn’t pitch ball with it, couldn’t write with it. Certainly, unlike you, couldn’t shoot fucking Dudley with it. Now come on. Please.”
“Yes,” whispered Alexander. “But you’ll never play guitar again.” And other things you will never do. Play basketball. Pitch. Hold your newborn baby in your palms.
Anthony swallowed. “Or go to war again.” He broke off. “I know. I have some adjusting to do. It is what it is. Mom says this, and you should listen to her. She says I got away with my life, and I’m going to do just fine. All we want is for you to be all right,” Anthony said. “That’s all any of us ever wanted.”
“Antman,” said Alexander, his hand on his son’s lowered head, his wounded chest drawn and quartered, “you’re a good kid.”
“I fucked things up so badly,” said Anthony on another night perhaps, though all nights and days drifted, hung suspended, seemed like one. “I never listened to a word my mother told me. All our mysteries went straight to the enemy. I’m really sorry. I trusted her so completely.”
“You’ve been like that your whole life. So open.”
“I didn’t see it. I really fell for her. I thought she was Andromeda, and she turned out to be the Gorgon Medusa, and I never suspected a thing until it was much too late.” His voice was unsteady. “I don’t know what I’m more staggered by—the depth of her abandoned heart or my own stupidity.”
“You know what, Ant?” said Alexander. “Self-flagellation is unnecessary. You’ve suffered enough.” He wanted to tell Anthony that even in Moon Lai’s unholy world, where black was white, and white was black, and Alexander’s twenty-five-year sentence for a fraudulent surrender and desertion charge was just punishment, and Anthony’s heart was the taipan’s plaything, and babies were nothing and meant nothing, the Gorgon Medusa still crept to the cellar door twice a day to change Anthony’s bandages and give him opium to ease his pain.
“I’m sick about Tom Richter,” said Anthony, his voice breaking.
“Yeah, bud,” said Alexander. “Me too.” They sat, unable to talk about him. Alexander turned away. He might have even cried. He was getting too soft in his hospital bed; he had to get on his feet.
Anthony told Alexander that back in 1966 Richter had called him into his quarters before Ant was moved up to SOG, and said that before he could put Anthony under his command, there was one thing he needed to know and get straight. Richter said that he had been legally separated from his wife since 1957, and so the time for recriminations had long passed; but there was one small question niggling him that he needed answered. After the Four Seasons graduation celebration, as they were all in the vestibule waiting for their cars, Anthony had been looking for his lighter and Vikki came up to him, flicked open hers and brought it to his face. The only reason Richter was mentioning this at all, he said, was because in the seventeen years he had known his wife, he had never seen her light a cigarette for anyone.
“I told him,” said Anthony, “that I had no idea what he was talking about, that I didn’t remember the incident at all. I apologized if it was improper, and Richter said that that was not the improper thing. I replied that there was nothing else and nothing to think about. And so we
left it at that and never spoke about it again.”
The father and son’s heads were low, staring into their separate distances and Alexander wanted to say that sometimes even bad husbands saw things, and then, because they were great men, did the right things, and sometimes the impossible did happen, and cigarette lightning struck—where it was clearly not supposed to—a wild girl in New York, a wild soldier in Leningrad—and then wanted to ask but didn’t if Vikki was going to continue to light Anthony’s cigarettes.
Alexander closed his eyes while Tatiana tended and nursed him, wrapped and rewrapped him, washed him, embraced him, and fed him from her hands, as he slowly recovered, his glass becoming smooth with her ministrations and the constant metronome of the symphonic noise of his family.
“Darling,” Tatiana said, touching his feet to see if they were cold, adjusting his blankets, “do you know what your youngest son built for his science project this year? A replica of the atomic bomb.” She paused. “At least I hope it was a replica.”
“It was, Mom,” Harry unconvincingly assured her, sitting on his father’s bed. “Dad, I showed everyone how it worked—from splitting the atom to launching the missile. It was so good, it won the Arizona state prize!”
“Yes, son,” said Tatiana. “Congratulations. But afterward your mother was called into the principal’s office with a school psychologist and asked if she would consider putting her youngest son under observation—wait, or was it...surveillance?”
Alexander laughed lightly. His chest still hurt every time he let out a breath. “Science project,” he then said slowly. “It’s not January already, is it?”
“It is,” said Tatiana, squeezing his feet.
Alexander stretched out his hand. “Harry-boy, come here. Did I miss your tenth birthday?”